I still remember the days when I had no cell phone. The days when I would have to flip through my elementary and middle school address books to find my friends’ phone numbers. The days when home phone was the primary way of reaching someone. My how things have changed. Continue reading →

Facebook, along with other social networking sites, have changed the face of privacy. We live in a world where “stalking” is now an acceptable norm. Nothing is private anymore. Your conversations are available to anyone in the world from the moment they are posted. It is my belief (perhaps paranoid) that once a picture is posted on the internet, even if for just a short period of time before it is deleted or “untagged” then the picture can be traced back to you in some way. Also, if someone really wanted to access all of your Facebook account without restrictions, I bet there is a way to get around the standard blocking security technique.

Today is a world dominated by the concept of instant gratification. If I can’t reach someone via text, my next option is to call them. Then if that fails, I will text again, and then proceed to write a Facebook message. One of these methods usually works. Only a few of my of my friends are so bad at keeping track of their phones that I have to resort to all of those methods at once. But why do I feel like I need a reply immediately? Why can’t I be content with waiting around for a response? Technology has changed our generation. Our impatience is only growing worse as the years go by.

With Facebook gone, I would be the most upset about losing all of my pictures. I have switched computers over the years and have had my laptop crash. Some of my pictures aren’t backed up anywhere besides on Facebook. To adapt to the tragedy of losing most of the pictures, I guess I would have to salvage as many photos as I could find and turn to printing out hard copies of each one. It would be back to an era of scrapbooking and non-virtual photo albums.

We would also have to adapt the ways in which we socially interact with each other. We would have to put more effort into keeping in touch with long-distance friends. I guess this will help you determine who your real friends are compared to your inflated list of Facebook friends.

Challenge for anyone who reads this: Take a look at your list of Facebook friends. If you wouldn’t even write a simple “happy birthday ___” to them on their Facebook Timeline on their birthday then are they worth keeping on your friends list?

The minute I wake up each morning, I grab my alarm clock (a.k.a. my iPhone), unlock it, and spend the first moments of my day checking social media outlets. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat. Facebook is obviously the most dominant of the four. Facebook has been part of my life since I was 14 years old; it’d be very easy to imagine what my world would be like without Facebook. Although it often offers the most intimate information about the people you’re connected with, Facebook offers the least intimate experience. I often find myself deliriously reading my news feed and asking myself, “Who is this person? Why are they on my news feed? What on earth are they talking about? Why do I care?” Many people I’m friends with (I’m talking about real-life friends) have deleted their Facebook for extended periods of time; some reactivated their account and some have remained “off the grid.” Perhaps it’s because they are more novel than Facebook, but I would have a much harder time deleting my Instagram/Twitter/Snapchat.

Both Instagram and Twitter have a format that allows for more personal sharing that would normally happen in the real world. Facebook offers so much information that is entirely unusable. I really don’t care about what my best friend’s little brother ate for brunch, but Facebook puts it on my newsfeed. I think the exclusivity on Twitter and Instagram come from their terminology. To connect with someone on Facebook you must “Friend” them. “Would you like to be my ‘friend’ so we could both be updated on the mundane lives we each are living?” It’s almost rude to not accept a “friend request” from even the most obscure “real-world” connections. The information gained from such “friends” is often unwanted and, for the most part, useless. Twitter and Instagram on the other hand each use the terminology of “following”. “Following” someone is a lot more deliberate than accepting a “friend request”. What I mean by more deliberate is that you choose to “Follow” where as you’re practically obligated to accept a “Friend Request.” On Twitter I follow 115 users, compared to the 1000+ friends on Facebook. The information I consume on Twitter is far more relevant and worthy of consumption than that of Facebook. Twitter consists of close friends’ quirky thoughts, not aimed at anyone in particular, and short amusing anecdotes. If Twitter, or Instagram, were to disappear I feel that my “real-world” connections would suffer far more than if Facebook were to disappear. I care about what a friend of mine tweets, I don’t care about the 180 picture photo album my cousin’s ex-girlfriend put up of her spring break.

My Twitter and Instagram, because they are more exclusive and personal, are a much deeper extension of myself than my Facebook. The smaller audience size of my Tweets and Photos, as well as the limited amount of output all users are allowed, enables me to share deeper, richer content while knowing those reading are more likely to appreciate my statements. For this reason, I think Instagram and Twitter are far more personally fulfilling than Facebook. Rappers like Trinidad James and A$VP Rocky recognize the greater intimacy of these social media outlets and reference Instagram by name in their lyrics. A world without Twitter and Instagram would be less enjoyable than a world without Facebook.

What would we all do in our spare time without Facebook? Whenever a spare moment, it is commonplace to see people checking their Facebook wherever you go. Many of us would probably admit to being slightly or even completely addicted to the social website. For the people who are heavy users and update their Facebook page on a daily basis, it is interesting to wonder what would happen if their Facebook suddenly just disappeared.

This parody highlights how so many of us have unthinkingly turned to social networks as the means to organize all of our social events, to the point where just asking a crowded room of people to a future event seems hopelessly disorganized.

Before the mobile phone, for instance when my parents were my age, people would make a greater effort to meet at a pre-arranged time and place, knowing that there was no way of informing the other party of changed plans at the last minute. If the Facebook event option of clicking the “maybe” button were to be removed, people might actually commit to a “yes” or “no” more often.

In reality, most of us invest an enormous amount of our time into this virtual social world that could feasibly disappear. Not only would the millions, even billions of photos and content that were exclusively uploaded to Facebook be gone forever, but the relationships forged within the site would be gone as well. For instance, you may be Facebook friends with an Australian or Russian, and Facebook has served to remove the geographical boundaries that exist between your two separate locations. Without Facebook, this friendship would most likely be gone. Unless of course you had taken note of their email address before the site was shut down.

In terms of business, the loss of Facebook would strip brands of an extremely effective marketing and PR tool. Having a presence on Facebook has afforded brands the opportunity to speak to their customers in a more direct and personable manner than ever before.

It is clear that Facebook is firmly entrenched as a vital part of our work and play time than we may realize. It also suggests that there is no going back. Social media is now a permanent feature of our world.

Sorry it’s taken me so long to put a prompt together, but I encountered some serious delays when I couldn’t think of a good portmanteau involving the word “facebook.”

Anyways, one of my biggest interests is in human communication, and how technology has affected that. So for this week’s prompt, I’m actually gonna ask you to get creative- really approach this with an open mind, and think about potential implications.

For this week’s post, pick a major means of communication (i.e. Facebook, Google, smartphones, email, snail mail, carrier pigeons etc.) that has had a significant impact on the ways in which we interact, and write about what you would think would happen if it stopped working on little to no notice. For example, how has the ability to look up stocks at any time from anywhere impacted the financial industry? What if people suddenly couldn’t do it? Or, if hackers took control of all of Google’s services, what’s the worst thing they could do (remember, Google does much more than web searching, so “using Bing” doesn’t cover all of it)?

Basically though, I really want you to have fun with it, and it doesn’t have to be all good/bad- this post isn’t meant to only be cautionary about our reliance on new things….